How strongly are trait positive and negative affectivity associated with anxiety symptoms? A multilevel meta-analysis of cross-sectional studies in anxiety disorders

There are well-established theoretical and empirical foundations for a negative association between trait positive affectivity and anxiety symptoms in anxiety disorders and a positive association between trait negative affectivity and anxiety symptoms, respectively. However, no previous meta-analysis systematically estimated to what extent trait positive and negative affectivity are associated with anxiety symptoms in anxiety disorders. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to obtain an evidence-based estimate of the associations between trait positive and negative affectivity with anxiety symptoms in anxiety disorders. We performed a systematic search including studies reporting estimates of the associations between trait positive and negative affectivity measures and anxiety measures in clinical populations that suffer from at least one anxiety disorder. We identified 13 and 14 eligible studies, documenting 19 and 21 mainly unpublished effect sizes from 1489 individuals that suffer from an anxiety disorder. We estimated an overall correlational effect size (r) using multilevel meta-analytic models accounting for within- and between-study variance components. The results of the omnibus models showed a small to moderate negative association between positive affectivity and anxiety symptoms (r = -0.19, 95 % CI [-0.30, −0.09]) and a strong positive association between negative affectivity and anxiety symptoms respectively (r = 0.53, 95 % CI [0.44, 0.61]). These associations are different from each other (r = .35, p < .001). The results are consistent with theoretical claims that anxiety disorders are highly associated with negative affectivity but to a lesser extent with positive affectivity. More research and systematic documentation are necessary to determine moderators of these overall associations.